Outlook Issue Solved with Cloud Email Signatures Solution

by HubSite 365 about Tony Redmond [MVP]

Principal at Redmond & Associates

AdministratorOutlookM365 Release

Discover how Microsofts Email Signature Gallery and roaming signatures can optimize your Outlook and OWA experience.

A New Solution to an Outlook Problem: Cloud Email Signatures

The author, Tony Redmond, recently shared insights on Microsoft's Email Signature Gallery and its interoperability with Outlook and OWA. By using this gallery, users can customize their email signatures, potentially enriching their communication significantly.

Available in a Word document format, the gallery of email signatures allows users to download and edit their bespoke signatures online. For instance, users can cut and paste a signature into the desktop version of the email software or OWA. The most important aspect of this feature is the synchronization across both clients courtesy of Microsoft's roaming signatures technology.

To craft a meaningful signature from the gallery, one needs to replace the photo, change the title, phone numbers, organization and address, and furnish links to their websites and Twitter accounts. Despite these apparent benefits, the gallery has some notable limitations. More Information about Outlook here.

Current Challenges with the Outlook Email Signatures

The first challenge is that Microsoft has not resolved the issue with roaming signatures breaking the Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration cmdlet, which previously supported HTML in OWA. Equally, since the introduction of multi-signature support, such problems have led to difficulties in managing email signatures, particularly for OWA users who've crafted beautifully formatted signatures.

The data on roaming signatures needs to be stored in the user's mailbox. Selecting a default signature for new messages and replies is another functionality currently missing, but would be a welcome addition.

The mechanism for storing email signature information in the user's mailbox is also riddled with complexities. For instance, for a single email signature, a folder is created to store some message items containing the signatures in HTML—including multimedia elements—in separate subfolders.

The Promise of Roaming Signatures

Despite its challenges, roaming signatures support is a promising feature, as the latest signature updates in the desktop version become available in OWA, and vice versa, after a short period. Regardless of the source of the signature, all clients can access and use it.

Roaming signatures might spell doom for third-party signature management products but interestingly, they serve to correct inconsistencies in the desktop version when using common signatures. As such, these signatures might not have any impact on ensuring proper use of corporate signatures across the organization, especially with non-Outlook clients. In fact, it might be advisable to consider the right tools for managing email signatures across multiple clients.

Finally, with the rapid changes within Office 365, it is always a challenge to stay up to date about all the updates and occasional challenges.

The Thrust of the Blog: Cloud Email Signatures

This blog post by Tony Redmond discusses the utility and drawbacks of Microsoft's Email Signature Gallery in Outlook and OWA applications. He writes about how the roaming signatures feature has solved the signature synchronization problem across multiple clients without breaking anything. Despite these advantages, Redmond also touches on the ongoing issues with this feature, such as problems with HTML support for OWA and the complex way the signature information is stored in the user's mailbox.

Despite the drawbacks, Redmond then lays emphasis on the advantages provided by the roaming signatures feature. It allows for the automation of signature updates across various platforms, providing a more streamlined and consistent user experience. He also highlights that even with this innovation, there is still a need for thoughtfully invested tools to manage corporate email signatures across different platforms. In essence, it's a balanced view on the evolution, potential, and limitations of cloud email signatures.

Read the full article Cloud Email Signatures Solve an Outlook Problem

Outlook - Outlook Issue Solved with Cloud Email Signatures Solution

Learn about Cloud Email Signatures Solve an Outlook Problem

Every organization with an online presence understands the importance of using a consistent email signature throughout their digital correspondence. Recently, Microsoft has provided a solution for this in the form of cloud email signatures to address an issue with the email client software. These signatures designed by Microsoft can be used with both Outlook and Outlook Web App (OWA).

You might ask: "How can this be achieved?" It's simple. The company has set up a dedicated Email Signature Gallery [1], a collection of numerous email signature templates available to users. These templates can be accessed via a Word document that can be downloaded or edited according to one's preference. To use the templates, one has to make necessary changes which could involve updating one's title, phone numbers, organization, address, and adding relevant links such as website and Twitter handle.

After setting up a signature, it can easily be integrated into Outlook or OWA. It's made accessible across both clients with the aid of roaming signatures [2], a Microsoft feature that stores the signature information in user mailboxes. It allows clients to access the signature information when required and apply these to messages.

How to Navigate the Microsoft Email Signature Gallery

Every Microsoft Email Signature Gallery is stored in a secure location and can be easily retrieved if known. When accessed, each signature is stored in its own sub-folder with other relevant information.

You can navigate this folder via the MFCMAPI utility [3] to view all the message items that hold the signature data in HTML format.
Each message item includes a content table storing additional information, graphics elements like icons, and the actual signature data.

The recent implementation of these cloud signatures is far more complex compared to earlier methods, such as the one used by OWA that only supported a single HTML signature. Regardless, one of the key benefits of this recent method is that it enables signatures to be updated across both Outlook and OWA; simply update a signature in one and it rolls out to the other after a short while. This feature works for all clients that support roaming signatures, including OWA, Monarch client [4] and the current Outlook click-to-run builds.

In conclusion, the introduction of roaming signatures has enriched the Microsoft ecosystem by providing consistent email signatures across all clients. It's a vital resource for organizations that want a unified digital presence. However, for those interested in centrally managing email signatures across multiple clients, additional tools such as CodeTwo's Email Signatures for Office 365 [5] may be needed. Always stay updated with the regular changes occurring in the Office 365 space, as it's crucial to your digital experience.

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